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Wednesday, July 29, 2015

More about Standard Place Names in FamilySearch Family Tree

If you have entered any data at all into the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, you have experienced the suggestion of a "Standard Place" or "Standard Date." Here is a screenshot showing the program's suggestion for a standard place:

The purpose for entering dates and places in a "standardized" fashion is explained in a Help Center document entitled, "Entering standardized dates and places." (Please be aware that Help Center documents and my links to them may change at any time. If you find that a link to a Help Center document no longer works, try going to the Help Center and searching for specific terms or phrases in the document you wish to find).

When you enter dates and places, Family Tree helps you select a standardized date or place. Using standardized dates and places helps clarify the information that you enter. It also helps the system locate people with the Find feature.

Note: FamilySearch recommends you use the name of the place at the time of the event. This matches with sources and facilitates hinting. FamilySearch is working to connect historic names of places with their modern names.

In reality, you can enter a non-standard date or place and the program will record it. The problem, as pointed out by the quote, is that unless a date format or place name is standard, the Search function of the Family Tree will have difficulty finding it or using it to find other information. One common problem with using non-standard dates is that the children in a family do not get sorted chronologically. Let's suppose you enter the date as follows:

4/5/99

This date has some problems. First of all is it 1899, 1799 or 1999? In addition, is it April 5th or May 4th? For this reason, the standardized dates now require this format:

5 April 1899

The name of the month should be completely spelled out. If you use an abbreviation for the month, it is too easily confused with the many different languages used by the people using the program around the world.

Now what about places? As the Help Center articles states, we need to be recording the places as they were called at the time the event occurred. I have used this before, but it is still a good example. Here are the changes in place name where my Tanner family originally settled in Arizona:

Allen's Camp, Yavapai, Arizona Territory, United States

St. Joseph, Yavapai, Arizona Territory, United States

St. Joseph, Apache, Arizona Territory, United States

St. Joseph, Navajo, Arizona Territory, United States

St. Joseph, Navajo, Arizona, United States

The physical location did not change (maybe a little) but the changes in governmental jurisdictions and names are important for locating records about the people during the different times the records were created. Can I enter all these variations, when appropriate? Yes, certainly. There is a detailed explanation of how to do this in the Help Center document. Click here for the full explanation. Here a quote with most of the pertinent information:

Begin typing the date or place. If Family Tree can identify the date or place that you mean, a list of standardized dates and places appears.

Click the correct option: The standardized date and place appears beneath the field. If the Family Tree can apply a standard, it does so, even if you did not choose an option from the list.

If you want the system to use only the standardized date or place, click the standard date or place in the list. The standard replaces what you entered. If you do not know the exact date, you can use "about," "before," or "after" with a year for a standardized date.

If you want the system to keep exactly what you enter, click None of the Above. This option appears at the bottom of the list of standard dates or places.

Standardized dates and places show a green banner with the date or place. Nonstandardized dates and places show a yellowish banner and the words "No Standard Selected. Click here to select a date" (or "place"). Click the message, and then click a standardized date or place.

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To include extra information that does not appear in the standardized place, such as the name of a hospital, cemetery, or church where the event took place, use the steps below:

Begin typing the place as you want it to appear. As you type, the system displays the closest matches in the list of standardized places.

After the part you want to add (cemetery in the example), type the final part of the place as it appears in the standardized place. If you are typing an old historical place, type the place, and then type the modern place to connect the old name for the place with the standardized name.

The system now displays the place you typed and the standardized place.

Instead of clicking the standardized place, click somewhere else on the screen. The system leaves the place as you type it but connects the place with the standardized place.

Tip:

Use Step 3 to put in old historical places with different modern names. Following this step preserves the old name but connects it with the modern name. Connecting with the standardized place makes it easier for other people who use the Find feature to find this person. If they look for a name and a place, the system can match the place they enter with the standardized place.

When you edit a date or place, click the date or place; then press the down arrow on the keyboard to see the standardized date or place.

8 comments:

Please allow me to once again hijack your forum, get on my soapbox, and continue a personal crusade.

The explanation of dates and place names you share from the help center articles, along with most explanations I have seen regarding this issue, neglects to include what I feel are two very important points. The first one being why Family Tree stores two copies of every date and place, one of which is in plain sight and the other hidden behind two mouse clicks and the second point being that “standard” does not mean “correct.”

(Continued) If I were writing a manual for Family Tree this would be the section on dates (the following is a combination of personal opinion and probably mis-interpreted observations that make sense to me, please don’t let anyone think it could in any way be official):

********

Family Tree makes use of a unique and powerful method of entering date and place name information. Each item is entered twice.

First is the Display Date or Display Place Name. This entry is to be read by people and, within reason, can be whatever your family considers to be most accurate or most appropriate for your ancestor’s existing original records, situation, historical setting, or language. This entry is the one that appears on a person’s individual page.

Second is the “Standard” Date or Name. In this setting, “standard” does not mean “required,” “recommended,” or even “correct.” This data could more properly called the “Uniform,” “Computer,” “Search,” or “Match” Date and Name. This entry is for computer use only and is used to unambiguously tell the computer program the Julian Day, for a date, or the geocode, for a place, meant by the Display Data. This entry is used by the computer in find routines, sorting routines, and matching routines. It is hidden from casual viewing on a person’s individual page, but can be seen by hovering the mouse pointer of the Display Data or by clicking on a date or place to show the detailed information then by clicking “Edit” to open the editing box.

Date Entry:

With the Data Entry/Editing box open, click in the Display Date field and start typing in the date. As you type, a quick-entry drop down menu will appear. If appropriate, click on the correct date in the quick-entry menu. This will transfer the quick-entry option into both the Display Date and the Standard Date fields.

Any suitable date format can be entered in the Display Date field. Use the format that best suits the individual situation. Some examples are:

When typing in date with formats that do not appear in the quick-entry drop down menu, type the entire date then click outside the data entry field. This will close the quick-entry menu and enter the first entry in that menu into the Standard Date field.

All the examples above trigger the same Julian Day of 2,349,332 (i.e. 2,349,332 days after January 1, 4713 BC, on the proleptic Julian calendar) which is entered into the Standard Date field as 25 February 1720 (or the equivalent in the language Family Tree is set to use) for easy interpretation. [Author’s note: I really have no idea how the standard date is internally stored in Family Tree but I do know that some type of day number is usually used in computer programing for ease in comparing dates, calculating intervals between dates, and converting between calendar systems.]

If entering the Display Date triggers the wrong Standard Date, click on the incorrect date in the green bar. This will open the standard date drop down menu. Click on the appropriate date to enter it in the Standard Date field. If the Standard Date field is yellow, the computer was unable to interpret the Display Date entered. Edit the date so that a choice of standards is triggered.

(Continued) If I were writing a manual for Family Tree this would be the section on place names (the following is a combination of personal opinion and probably mis-interpreted observations that make sense to me, please don’t let anyone think it could in any way be official):

********

Place Name Entry:

With the Data Entry/Editing box open, click in the Display Place Name field and start typing in the place. As you type, a quick-entry drop down menu will appear. If appropriate, click on the correct place in the quick-entry menu. This will transfer the quick-entry option into both the Display Place Name and the Standard Place Name fields.

Any suitable place name can be entered in the Display Place Name field. Most commonly, this will be the name in use on the date of the event being recorded. Place names have changed through history. For example:

all refer to the same geographic location at different times in history.

When typing in places that do not appear in the quick-entry drop down menu, type the entire place name then click outside the data entry field. This will close the quick-entry menu and enter the first entry in that menu into the Standard Place Name field.

All the examples above trigger the same geocode, that is the same latitude and longitude, of 34.95583, -110.33333 (as can be seen in Family Search’s Place Research tool found at https://familysearch.org/int-std-ui-research/ ) which is entered into the Standard Place Name field, for easy interpretation, in one of several different geographical name versions depending on how the Display Place Name was entered.

If entering the Display Place Name triggers the wrong Standard Place Name, click on the incorrect name in the green bar. This will open the standard place name drop down menu. Click on the most appropriate geographical (not necessarily historical) place name available to enter it in the Standard Place Name field. If the Standard Date field is yellow, the computer was unable to interpret the Display Place Name entered. Edit the place name so that a choice of standards is triggered.

The double data entry system used in Family Tree solves a long standing problem in genealogy database, that is, how to enter date and place information in a way that allows researchers to be clear, complete, accurate and understandable to other researchers and at the same time satisfy the requirement of computer programming to be precise and unambiguous.

Gone for good, I hope, are the days of PAF with its strict requirement of two numeral day, three letter month, four numeral year and four section place name, none of which exceed sixteen letters. Family Tree allows me, if necessary and when appropriate, to make the following entry:

Birth44 years, 6 months, and 5 days before his death on February 4, 1902, which calculates to be 30 July 1857In a red barn twenty five miles northwest of Johnson’s Mill in Iron County, Utah Territory, United States

which Family Tree happily accepts and uses to enter the green Uniform Julian Day date and Uniform geocode place of

I think everything you have to say makes sense. I am not sure that the methodology used by FamilySearch works exactly like your explanation, but thanks for the ideas anyway. I first thought that FamilySearch's "Standard" place name was obscuring the actual places events occurred. But now I see that it is just another tool to increase the accuracy of the Family Tree. Thanks again for the long comment.

My experience with the date field is that when you put the birth date as "about 1840", the child will not be sorted in the correct (chronological) order. I have resorted to putting only "1840", even though it may be an approximation, in order to get the children sorted in age order. Comments?

"About 1840," according to the Standard Finder at https://familysearch.org/stdfinder/StdDateLookupResults.jsp means "From 1 Jan 1839 to 31 Dec 1841" and for some reason the programming uses 1 Jan 1839 as the sort date. So if you have a child born Feb 1839 and a child born About 1840, the second child come first in sorted order because 1 Jan 1839 comes before Feb 1839. There have been a lot of complaints about that on the feedback boards. I assume it is on the list of minor annoyances that need to be fixed after other major projects, like completely shutting down New Family Search, are completed.